Do we hate Harry Potter and Twilight?

[Trent Roman]

Harry Potter is frequently called the "new Harry Potter", the "next Harry Potter" or the "spiritual successor to Harry Potter".

Guh? Like black is the new black?

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[iguana_tonante]

 

[Anthony Sabre]

Hate em' both!

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Ignored nerd gets together with the hot chick. Examples: Peter/MJ in Spider-Man, Shia LaBeouf/Megan Fox in Transformers.

I would like to point out here that your average "ignored nerd" does not look like Tobey Maguire or Shia LaBeouf do after the many months they spent with their personal trainers in preparation for these films.

Generally, everyone in the movies, male & female, is way better looking than they would be in real life. Actors like LaBeouf & Maguire get to play the "ignored nerds" because they're the glamorized movie equivalent of that type. Let's put it this way...
Brad Pitt:Shia LaBeouf::Shia LaBeouf:me.

Male fantasy does not revolve around wanting to be men who are better looking than us who get women we never could.

I'd agree with the 1st part but not strongly disagree with the 2nd part. We may not fantasize about being Shia LaBeouf or Ricky Gervais but we do certainly fantasize about getting together with women like Megan Fox & Jennifer Garner.

There are even a few somewhat male-centric romantic comedies out there, like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Invention of Lying, & Knocked Up.

Outside of humiliatrix and cuckolding porn, most men don't really fantasise about being cheated on. Just a little FYI there for you.

Wait, what?

I concur that most men don't fantasize about being cheated on like in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. However, the real story in that movie is about Jason Siegel discovering new love with Mila Kunis. That's where the fantasy lies. As for Kristen Bell cheating on him at the beginning of the film, that's actually a popular way to begin romantic comedies, with the protagonist being dumped or in some other way romantically stifled. For a female equivalent, I direct you to The Holiday.

 

[DarKush]

I'm not a fan of either franchise but I don't hate them. With Harry Potter, I'm not a huge fantasy fan, and if I do fantasy I care more of LOTR or Conan variety. Even though some of the FX and creatures in those movies look interesting, its not interesting enough to get me to watch them.

I listened to a little bit of the audiobook for Twilight and it just wasn't my thing either. I don't care for Meyers take on vampires. I like the vamps from Lost Boys, Blade, Underworld, Bram Stoker's Dracula, etc. Not much into the romantic vampires like Meyers and Anne Rice. Looking back, I guess both series having teen protagonists perhaps might be a reason they aren't grabbing my attention. If I was a teen, I might be into HP, not sure about Twilight since its primary audience appears to be young girls.

 

[Extrocomp]

Harry Potter is frequently called the "new Harry Potter", the "next Harry Potter" or the "spiritual successor to Harry Potter".

Guh? Like black is the new black?

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

You know what I meant! I was in a rush and the first time I wrote my post it didn't get posted for some reason and I had to write it again. Now no one's going to take me seriously.

 

[Lookingglassman]

Harry Potter is boring. Some kid doing magic trick. Saw the first couple of movies and refused to spend any more money on this crap.

Twilight - Drama queen vampires. A bunch of emo fools. The only vampires I like are the ones in True Blood.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

New Moon wasn't quite as bad as I expected, granted I wasn't expecting much, but my 13 year old niece loved it.

 

[Rowan Sjet]

Harry Potter is boring. Some kid doing magic trick. Saw the first couple of movies and refused to spend any more money on this crap.

To be fair, they were directed by Chris Columbus of Home Alone fame. Of course they're gonna suck. Doesn't help that the first two books are the most kiddy.

 

[Lapis Exilis]

Don't get me wrong - I'm not defending Twilight. In fact, remember my original premise was that Twilight, HP and Star Wars are all fairly mediocre material that have broad appeal.

True, but Twilight, unlike HP and Star Wars, seems to mix medium-to-poor reviews with its success, while those two franchises are more or less more positively recieved, particularly the early Star Wars films.

I'm afraid I can no longer separate the first two Star Wars films from the franchise in general - so when I say "Star Wars is mediocre broad-appeal entertainment aimed at guys" I mean all of Star Wars. And it only gets the mediocre label because of the first two films, which average out how unbelievably stupid the last 4 films are - easily as poorly written tripe as Twilight. And certainly the PT mixed medium to poor reviews with success.

It seems to me to be a little more like Transformers in terms of popular reaction; there's a series that is shamelessly male adolescent fantasy and has been critically trashed but also enormously successful financially. Being unfamiliar with Twilight I'll concede that may be an unfair comparison to make, but that is how it looks to this woefully uninformed observer.

I think that comparison is fair as well - though I'd argue that Twilight's popularity is less transient than Transformers, which is popular during the first two weeks of release and then entirely forgotten until the next spectacle sequel.

Would it be horribly crude and insensitive of me to compare it to regular baseball and Negro Baseball? If so, apologies, but it seems to me to be somewhat the same idea - male fantasies are sufficiently dominant they're both expected to be enjoyed by women and are everywhere. The latter entertainment is a trifle ghettoized.

Which is the point I was trying to make as well. Plenty of women dislike action movies - find them boring and unentertaining, but go because their boyfriends are going. However, there's another section of women who like both romantic comedies and action movies, because action movies are the Big Movies, because women have grown up on men's stories from The Great Gatsby to Moby Dick to The Outsiders to Superman, and have long since learned to enjoy them (in a variety of ways - from identifying with the protagonist, to identifying with the protagonist's love interest, to enjoying them just as good stories). And then there's a smaller group, to which I belong, that love heroic fiction more than your average romance tale and so prefer action movies (in general) to romantic comedies (which, except in rare instances, I find neither romantic nor funny - this does not equate to them being bad stories, however, simply not my cup of tea).

However, stories of romance have long been ghettoized as "for girls" and men have learned to be embarrassed if they enjoy them because someone somewhere will throw a disparaging remark his direction if he mentions he liked it - and occasionally guys are roundly humiliated by brothers, fathers and/ or friends for enjoying such tales. This then gets communicated to any story where a female is the protagonist. For instance, some friends of mine and I were trying to pick a movie and I suggested Whale Rider - a truly beautiful and touching tale about a girl coming of age as a modern day Maori and her relationship with her father and grandfather. And the guys in the group shook their heads. I said, why not - you guys like art films, this is critically acclaimed. They said, "because it's about a girl. We'll be bored."

Granted anecdotal evidence only goes so far, but I'm pretty sure several other people in this discussion have run into the same thing, either amongst their friends, or in themselves. I'm trying to deal with it right now with my nephews (ages 6 and 8) who have already absorbed that they should be embarrassed if they watch a movie or read a book about a girl main character - and they've grown up in an extremely progressive household.

The BS in all this is had a man wrote the story, the exact same damn book, he'd be neutered for being misogynist asshole who probably was a closest pedophile. Given that a woman wrote it, it's romantic, a fairy tale.

And, as has been previously pointed out, if we had "Twilight Dads" they'd all be in jail on child pornography charges.

Come on. Let's not pretend there isn't an entire industry built on sexualizing young girls. Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and the Olsen Twins practically built their careers on it.

Ha! Good point. Likewise, wasn't there a large 25 and older guy audience for Buffy during the high school years, many of whom I'm sure lusted heartily over Gellar?

And if you don't think male authors get away with all kinds of deviant writing you're probably not reading much. Stephen King got himself anointed the master of horror doing it.

I'm reading King's On Writing right now and he speaks often of the numerous letters he's received in his career from people outraged at his various visions.

I was saying you have the belief that men prefer male, and women female protagonists, and from what you've said I can't see where I'm wrong. I am not saying you have an attitude problem just that is your way of seeing it.

I think, in general, it is true that men tend to enjoy stories about men and women tend to prefer stories about women. If you look at statistics of who reads what kind of books and who watches what kind of tv - this is indeed, generally true.

I'm not saying all stories were/are aimed at 18-34 year old males, but a majority were, because that was where the cash was seen as being.

Actually, from its inception in the 19th century, the novel was seen as "women's entertainment" (and vastly inferior trash to the sturdy masculine books men read) and even today in English-speaking countries, women read overwhelmingly more novels than men do. So, I don't think it's true that most stories were aimed at men.

You're right that there are groups of people shows are aimed at and they're tailored to try and attract that group. But I don't buy that they are solely or even mostly the only group who can and do enjoy them. Skins is a British teen drama and a full 50% of its audience is over 35 because it is a well made show.

Sure - I've enjoyed many a tale about people of other ages, ethnic groups, genders, sexual orientations, species, etc from me. I never said people only ever enjoy stories with people who are exactly like them. It's possible to identify with a variety of characters for a variety of reasons. Some viewers/ readers are voracious in their intake of stories - and I wasn't really talking about them. I was talking about general audiences - people who are in it for the entertainment alone, which is the larger percentage of the audience. Really only a small group of folks go at stories critically and have the kind of wide-ranging tastes that many people on this board have.

And I'm sure there are people who enjoy things because they imagine vicariously living the events that happen, or even because they can be thankful it's not happening to them. But I think the whole thing of needing someone to "relate" to is bullshit.

I disagree - I think most of us look to relate to someone in the story. How flexible we about who that person can be or look like is the difference. Most of the people in this discussion have honed their abilities to enjoy many kinds of stories with many kinds of protagonists. However for a huge proportion of people, I think that they tend towards stories that have someone who is generally similar to themselves. Not always, not exactly, but generally. Thus why we see the audience for Twilight largely consisting of teenage girls, the audience for Star Wars largely consisting of 6-40 year old guys, the audience for Harlequin romances largely consisting of adult women, the audience for Clint Eastwood westerns largely consisting of adult men.

Then there's a ton of material in the middle with lots of appeal both directions - which is where I'd put stuff like Lost, Grey's Anatomy, even Battlestar - large, ensemble casts with sprawling stories that include action/ adventure, romance, family drama, sex, religion, etc.

I think it's interesting that most of the "male wish fulfillment fantasies" involve blowing shit up. You'd think that would be a fairly gender neutral fantasy.

No, a guy would think that's a fairly gender-neutral fantasy, because guys a lot of the time think that guy stuff is gender neutral, just like a lot of the time white people think white stuff is race neutral. It's not. Fairly few women laugh and clap their hands after destroying something via explosives. Personally, I tend to think in that moment (and yes, I have actually hung around with some folks into demolitions and the group consisted of 2 dozen guys and one woman) - that was a waste of time, effort and material for a half-second climax, and now someone's going to have clean up that mess. In general, random destruction for the sake of destruction really doesn't strike me as cool.

Now, there are also "male wish fulfillment fantasies" of a romantic nature. Generally, I'd put them into 2 categories:

1.) Alpha male scores every piece of ass in sight. Example: Every single James Bond movie.

2.) Ignored nerd gets together with the hot chick. Examples: Peter/MJ in Spider-Man, Shia LaBeouf/Megan Fox in Transformers.

There are even a few somewhat male-centric romantic comedies out there, like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Invention of Lying, & Knocked Up.

Very true - and I'd even venture their are a variety of other male wish fulfillment fantasies of a romantic nature that are somewhat more sophisticated than the comedies listed - from movies like Bull Durham to maybe things like Big Fish. There's an audience out there too for a thoughtful, reflective masculinity where values like commitment, tenderness, fatherhood (or sonhood), etc are explored.